Friday, February 10, 2012

Shemp Forever!



Ed here: I always quote my friend Max Collins whenever I talk about Shemp Howard. Shemp was the only one of the Stooges who seemed to be dimly aware that life should't be like this--he just didn't know what to do about it. Even when I was eight I sensed a certain melancholy in Shemp. He seemed overwhelmed by everything, the way a lot of the vets in our neighborhood just back from the big war did. Mo and Larry just punched it out like machines; hilarious machines but machines nonethless. Shemp is my favorite Stooge; he was also the only one who had an independent successful movie career. Here's a great website: Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict.


THE LITTLE STOOGE WHO COULD


The third of five Howard brothers, Shemp was born Samuel Horwitz in Brooklyn, New York in 1895. His unusual moniker “Shemp” came when his mother couldn’t yell “Sam” in her thick Lithuanian accent, and instead it came out as “Shemp,” so that’s just what everybody called him. Now during his early days Shemp had no ambitions to be in show business. However, that wasn’t true for his younger brother Moe, who wanted nothing more then to enter vaudeville. As a result of his desire, Moe was continuously coming up with new dance hall acts and recruiting Shemp as his partner. Moe was a natural on stage, but Shemp was just along for the ride in an attempt not to let his younger brother down. However, after dropping out of both high school and failing at being a plumber, not to mention a discharge from the army after it was discovered that he was a bed wetter, which saved him from the trenches of WWI, Shemp really had nothing else left to do. As a result, by 1917 Shemp and Moe were working the vaudeville circuit as part of a blackface act but by 1921 the act broke up when Moe joined comedian Ted Healey as part of his roughhouse act. As Ted Healy and his Stooge, Ted and Moe became a popular vaudeville act, and the foundations of The Three Stooges began.


Ted Healy and his Stooges - Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Shemp Howard and Ted Healey

It was in 1922, when Shemp went to one of Ted and Moe’s performances that Moe saw his older brother sitting in the audience and started to yell insults at him from the stage. Shemp, in total sync to his brother’s sense of humor, got out of the audience and jumped on stage and he, Moe and Ted improvised the rest of the act together. The result was a roaring success and after the performance Ted Healey asked Shemp to join the act. At first Shemp was reluctant to join Healey and Moe, especially as a result of the protests of his mother. Jennie Howard was against any of her sons being in show business, and having already lost Moe to vaudeville and with youngest brother Jerome (aka Curly) following in Moe’s footsteps, she didn’t want to lose Shemp to show business as well. She had far bigger aspirations for her boys then to just be Stooges. However, when Ted Healey, who was always a con man, gave a hundred dollars to the synagogue the Howard’s attended, Jennie reluctantly agreed. Thus Shemp became the second Stooge. Three years later, in 1925, a third Stooge, violinist Larry Fine, joined the act and the four were finally christened Ted Healy and his Three Stooges.

for the rest go here: http://popcultureaddict.com/movies-2/shemp-htm/

18 comments:

jervaise brooke hamster said...

The Three Stooges were a bloody load of old rubbish, perhaps the most pathetically unfunny comedy team to ever disgrace our screens. They were an abomination of the lowest order.

Ed Gorman said...

Fuck off Jervaise, i dont give a toss about your opinion, to me they were truly great.

jervaise brooke hamster said...

Ed, revel in nostalgia if you must but i prefer the truth regarding those laughable talentless wankers.

Anonymous said...

The Stooges is (are?) where we draw the line. No middle ground. Count me in as a card carrying muttonhead. Ah, Shemp. The Thinking Man's Stooge.

--Stephen Mertz

James Reasoner said...

Growing up I never cared for Shemp, but I saw one of the shorts with him in it not long ago and was pretty impressed. I need to watch more of his work.

The Stooges are greatness, always have been, always will be.

Anonymous said...

Jim, to say that The Stooges are greatness is like saying that Adolf Hitler was a good geezer.

James Reasoner said...

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Walker Martin said...

It's unusual to see a Stooge hater actually admit that they can't stand the Stooges. Women yes, because they simply do not understand the fun in the Stooges. Maybe they see it as too violent?

But most men who hate the Stooges usually stay in the dark corners, muttering that they don't get it. Every now and then one of them spouts off that the Stooges are not funny but after getting a couple knuckle sandwiches, they shut up and return to the dark crevices whence they came.

I see Ed Gorman properly administered one poke in the eye to a dissatisfied Stooge hater. Who's next?

Anonymous said...

Hey Walker, The Stooges represent the stupidity and idiocy that our (hell-on-earth) society unfortunately prefers to revel and wallow in. Its much easier for people to relate to The Stooges than it is for them to relate to Noam Chomsky, hence the fact that our society revolves around violence and absurd nonsense rather than the sweetness and goodness that it should revolve around.

Walker Martin said...

I think we all know how the Stooges would react to the above comment!

I've read alot of history and it seems to me that society has always revolved around violence and absurd nonsense, so the Stooges are just acting like normal human beings.

This discussion may drive me to finish off my last 6 pack of The Three Stooges Beer. It's worth alot of money since I don't believe they make it anymore.

Anonymous said...

Walker my old mate, dont you bloody-well understand ?, we`re now approaching a point in history where the violence and absurd nonsense is finally reaching completely unbearable levels and with nuclear weapons now available to everyone the destruction of the entire planet will soon be at hand. And yes geezer, in case you were wondering, The Three Stooges (and the rest of that hideous abomination known as Hollywood) are more responsible for that current loathsome state of affairs than anything else. Enjoy your beer my old mucker because soon the world as we know it will be just dust and vapour.

Walker Martin said...

Anonymous, one thing I agree with you and that is that the world will one day will be dust and vapour. In fact, I hate to day it, but we all will soon be nothing but dust, nuclear weapons or not.

I say, let's all go out to our doom watching The Three Stooges! There are worse ways to end it all.

Anonymous said...

Walker, another key point that you seem to be forgetting here is that it doesn`t ALL have to end, if just Hollywood (and all film-making around the world) could be destroyed then everything would be rosy for the for-seeable future. By the way, it would be great if religion, alcohol, and sport could be eradicated too because i believe those three things to be murderous "wolves-in-sheeps-clothing" with-in our society as well.

Cap'n Bob said...

If the Stooges are going to destroy the world, let's at least give them proper credit, and to that end I declare Curly as a comic genius and the Stooges a great comedy team. I've been enjoying them unabated for half a century. If you don't like them, fine. Just shut up about it, you knuckleheads.

jervaise brooke hamster said...

All we need is gorgeous naked 18 year-old chicks, everything else (especially The Three Stooges) is bull-shit believe me.

Cap'n Bob said...

Jervaise, i whole-heartedly agree with regards to the gorgeous naked 18 year-old chicks (thats a given obviously), its just that The Stooges do still make me laugh, thats why i watch them.

jervaise brooke hamster said...

Cap'n Bob, who would you say is the most gorgeous bird you`ve ever seen ?.

Cap'n Bob said...

Dolly Parton, when the bird was 18 in 1964, that bird was truly astonishing back in those days.